Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ The Blue Rose ❯ Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

 

Several weeks later…

 

MONDAY

 

The two teenage boys walked through the courtyard gates of Middle School Number 1, Tokyo-3 Prefecture. Both of the boys were Americans: one was of medium build and height with unkempt blond hair and green eyes; the other was more muscular, with closely cropped black hair and dark eyes, and was slightly taller (and a lot taller than most of the other students they saw).

 

Other students in blue and white uniforms walked to class, chatting with each other before the start of the day. The two Americans, dressed in the same clothes as the boys in the school, tried to find their way through the school halls. Other students curiously glanced at them as they walked by, but no one made any attempt to talk to them.

 

Both boys spent a good part of the morning just getting lost inside the school. Neither had ever been to Japan before, though they both could speak some Japanese. Through a series of small misadventures, they found themselves inside one of the school classroom halls. To them, the school was plain, clean, and structured: multiple stories high, and increasingly crowded as the morning wore on.

 

As they looked at their map (which didn't have a word of English on it), they searched for what was supposed to be their starting classroom, hoping that they had understood the old custodian's directions from ten minutes before. As they looked down one particular hallway, one of the boys saw a girl sitting alone on the hallway floor, reading a book.

 

“Look at the little girl there,” motioned the blond-haired boy to his companion.

“Where?” asked the other.

He pointed her out. “Over there, sitting against the wall, reading her book.”

“She's hardly little,” the tall boy observed. “She's same age as all the others here, 14 or 15, or whatever.”

“Oh, no, she's a little girl,” the blond boy replied.

“How can you tell?”

“It's the look on her face- still like a little child.”

The taller boy got a better look at the girl in the hallway. “She looks so unusual.”

“How so?”

“Did you notice the blue hair?” the tall boy pointed out.

“I think it's a Japanese thing,” said the blond-haired boy. “You see photos of Tokyo, before Second Impact, where the girls would walk around in all that unusual makeup and stuff, maid costumes and all that.”

“No, it's not just the blue hair,” said the tall boy. “Look carefully at her eyes!”

The other boy took a good look. “The eyes? Oh, wow! They're red!”

“Yes,” said the tall boy. “Bright red.”

“Oh. Now that IS unusual.”

“Also, I get this sort of feeling from her,” said the tall boy.

 

The blond boy turned to him. “Like what?”

“Like…she's definitely not normal. Something that I can't put a finger on it, but definitely not normal. It's like she's some sort of ghost.” The tall boy scratched his head as he kept looking at the girl in the hallway.

 

The auburn-haired boy thought to himself for a moment as he watched her, and started to walk toward the girl.

 

“Where are you going?” asked the tall boy, as he followed the other.

“I'm going to talk to her,” replied the blond-haired boy, as he moved towards the girl.

“Are you nuts?” exclaimed the tall boy. “We're new around here! They'll think it's rude! I think you have to be introduced formally or something.”

“I don't care,” the blond boy replied. “I'm going to talk to her. Dude,” he turned to his friend and smiled. “Be my wingman!”

“Wingman?” groaned the other, “Oh cripes, you gotta be kidding! Two American dumb-asses, first day in the new school and he wants to hit on the weird chick!”

 

Both of the boys walked to just in front of the sitting girl, with the blond-haired boy in front. He then leaned over slightly in front of her.

 

“Uh…Hi!”

 

The blue-haired girl just kept reading her book, ignoring the boy.

 

He tried to speak Japanese to her: “Umm… excuse me?” She then silently looked up at him.

“Uh-H-H-Hello! How are you?” he said nervously. The girl still silently stared at him, without any facial expression. “I'm Patrick...Um...What's your name?”

 

The tall boy watched his friend's pick-up attempt and thought to himself, “Oh man, he is so blowing this!”

 

Suddenly the girl then broke her silence. “Ayanami.....Rei” she said in a whisper-like voice.

“Uh...what did you say?” asked a shocked Patrick in English.

“Rei,” she repeated, looking directly at him as she said it.

Patrick never felt so nervous in his life. “Oh, Okay.” Then he said in Japanese: “Nice to meet you! I'm Patrick! Patrick Forrestal.”

“You are American,” she said in English.

Patrick exclaimed, also in English. “You know English?!”

“Yes. I learned it.”

“Oh,” he sighed. “Well that's great, it seems like no one here speaks it. Well, anyway…”

 

The musical chime of the starting bell sounded over the loudspeakers. Any students left in the hallways quickly moved into classrooms as teachers began walking down the hallway to their classes.

 

Oh, crap, Patrick thought to himself. School is starting. Just as I'm getting started here.

 

Upon hearing the bell Rei quietly closed her book and stood up. “Time to go,” she said, and without saying another word started to walk away toward the classrooms.

 

Patrick panicked. “What class are you?” he said in English. She didn't reply but just kept walking.

 

“No, that's not it!” he said to himself. He tried to rephrase the question in Japanese, but the blue-haired girl didn't reply. Instead she just silently slipped into a classroom. Patrick wasn't sure if she had heard him or not.

 

“Oh, okay then. See you later!” he called after her.

 

The tall boy was observing all of this with a smile on his face as walked over to the now-defeated Forrestal. “Man! That took complete guts! You totally hit on her!”

“I didn't do anything,” scoffed Patrick. “I completely blew it. She probably thinks I'm weird.”

“Then you two make the perfect couple,” quipped the other.

“Knock it off, Double-V!” Patrick retorted. “Anyway, where is our classroom? I have no idea how classes work in Japan.”

“Let me check the map again.” The tall boy looked at his map and then compared it to the hallway they were currently in. “Here it is….2-A.”

 

They both quickly walked down the corridor and found the classroom. Patrick noted to himself it was the same one that the blue-haired girl had slipped into. After they walked inside, they stopped after a few feet as stares meet other stares. All of the students in the class stopped what they were doing and silently looked straight at them.

 

"Umm...” asked a still very nervous Patrick “What do we do now?”

 

The teacher, an older man with glasses and white hair spoke to them in English. “Are you Mr. Forrestal? And Mr. Vinson?”

 

“Yes!” they both exclaimed, and then in Japanese they said “Sumimasen! Hajememashite!”

 

The old teacher politely replied “It's okay. My English is not good, but enough. Please stand here.” He motioned to both of the boys to stand in front of the class, whereupon they did so feeling so much like goldfish in a bowl being watched by a pack of hungry cats.

 

“You will introduce yourselves now,” said the old teacher, who spoke something in Japanese to the class that the two American boys couldn't understand. The teacher then slowly walked over the chalkboard and wrote the boys names on the chalkboard, both in roman letters and in Katakana, the syllabic characters reserved for foreign names and words.

 

Vance addressed the class in English. “Hi! I'm Vance Vinson, and this is Patrick Forrestal." Then he said the same thing in Japanese, but some of the students started laughing.

 

“Why are they laughing?” Vance asked as the teacher quietly motioned to the class to be quiet.

 

The old teacher corrected him: “You made a slightly small grammar mistake. You referred to Mr. Forrestal as a thing, not a person. It is okay. Please take your seats.” He motioned to two desks at the back of the classroom.

 

“See, your Japanese sucks!” Patrick teased Vance.

“Damn grammar!” Vance growled.

 

The boys started to walk down the aisles as the other 38 students in class 2-A stared at the foreigners. But one of them, a slight, pretty girl with red hair tied back, actually seemed happy to see them.

 

“Finally, some other Americans here!” the girl exclaimed. With blue eyes, she didn't look at all Japanese, and her English clearly had an American accent. “Have we met?” Patrick asked her.

 

The red-haired girl confidently replied “I don't think so. You would have known it!”

Vance was impressed. “Damn, your English is good!”

The girl haughtily replied “Of course, stupid! I'm American, just like you.”

 

A short, slender boy next to her said in Japanese “Asuka, you're from Germany. Why is your English so good?”

"Baka Shinji!" she teased back. "I'm American, too. The name is LANGLEY, isn't it?”

“I always thought that was German,” the boy said, ignoring the insult. He approached both of the Americans. “Excuse me, but I can't speak much English. My name is Ikari.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Patrick, who then pointed to Asuka. “Who's the girl?”

“Asuka Soryu...Langley,” replied Shinji.

“His roommate!” called out a taller boy dressed in a black running suit in the back. The whole class laughed.

“Roommate...how interesting!” Vance quipped. He then whispered something in Patrick's ear.

 

“Damn, why didn't you tell me earlier?” Patrick said. “NERV, huh?” Both boys found the empty desks in the back of the classroom and sat down. As he was sitting down, Patrick noticed that Rei, the blue-haired girl, was sitting by the window. She wasn't paying any attention to the entire ruckus and just stared out the window. He waived to her to get her attention, and thought that she could see her looking at him out of the corner of her eye. However, she did nothing in return and just continued to look out the window.

 

 

After the school day was over, the two Americans talked in the hallway outside the classroom.

 

“So, they're the First, Second, and Third Children?” Patrick said to Vance. “Why didn't you just tell me earlier?”

“I had heard the rumors, but I wasn't sure until you spoke to her,” he replied. “All I had was the name.”

“Rei, you mean?”

“Yeah, Rei Ayanami. Anyway, all three live here, and the Second and Third live in the same place together.”

“That must be an interesting arrangement,” observed Patrick. “I can definitely see who wears the pants in that family!”

“Actually they're in Captain Katsuragi's place,” Vance corrected. “You do remember her, don't you?”

 

Patrick did remember. “Oh, right, the Japanese officer babe!” She had visited both pilots briefly at NERV-2 in Nevada just recently. “Damn! She was hot!”

“Yeah, she's both beauty and beast,” said Vance. “Anyway, we're supposed to meet her later after school. I don't think they've told the others about us yet.”

“Definitely not,” said Patrick. “Otherwise they would have said something.”

“Although they probably suspect who we are already,” Vance replied. “What the heck we're doing here in their school is beyond me.”

 

Patrick sighed. “We just go where they tell us. What about the First Child?”

I don't know anything more than the name,” said Vance. “I suppose we'll find out when they formally introduce us later.”

 

The blond boy had gone back into dream-mode. “Still, though, she's really very…interesting.” He stared again at Rei as she walked down the hallway with her book bag, heading out of school and oblivious to his presence.

 

Vance just shook his head. “Oh, man, you are in love!”

“No, it's not that,” Patrick protested. “It's just, well, anyway, I'm sure to meet her later, right?”

 

Just then Asuka walked past the two Americans, with Shinji Ikari following her quietly from behind. She called out to them, “Hey guys! How's it going?”

“Hey, Asuka!” they both responded.

“We'll see you both this afternoon then!” she said.

 

Both boys had blank looks on their faces as Asuka and Shinji walked down the hallway together, headed out of school.

 

“Told you!” Vance playfully hit Patrick on the head.

 

After school, both boys boarded the train and traveled from school to the headquarters of NERV, the United Nations agency responsible for the Evanglion project.  The train ride was short, and most passengers were either personnel of NERV or civilians associated with it in some way.  None of the other passengers paid the two boys any notice.

After exiting the train, they walked a short distance to what looked like to them a theme park entrance: a series of gates, each requiring a pass card to open.  It was in fact the entrance to the GeoFront, NERV's giant underground facility.  Just in front of the gates was a rather attractive twenty-something Japanese woman in a red uniform, wearing a beret and carrying a clipboard case. Vance cheerfully called out to her, “Hello Misato-san!”

“Hello, Vance!” the woman replied in accented English. “It's nice to see you again.  And, Patrick, do you remember me?”

“Oh, do I ever!” he replied with a smile.

She smiled too, pleased at the flattery. “I'll take that as a compliment.  I need to give you both of your security cards so you can get in and out of here, there's some paperwork to be done, and then we'll get together with the others.  I heard that you ran into them already.”

“We had our first day of class today,” said Patrick.

“Good, nice to know we're getting a good start,” she replied.  “Besides, I think Asuka wants the company. For someone who's part-Japanese, you'd never know it!”

 

Misato Katsuragi led both boys through the gates, each one of them sliding their new security cards in the provided slot to gain entry.  She then led them down a corridor and to a bank of escalators, making small talk along the way.  After what seemed like the longest escalator ride either of them had ever taken, they finally exited and again walked through a long maze of corridors.  They made several stops along the way, seeing various people who spoke rapid-fire Japanese with Misato, whereupon she usually pulled papers out of the clipboard case, exchanged them with the staff members, and took the two boys to their next stop.  After about twenty minutes of bureaucratic process they finally reached a conference room.

 

Waiting inside was another Japanese woman about the same age as Misato, with dyed blond hair, a lab coat, and brown stockings on her very noticeable long legs. Standing next to her were Japan's three Evangelion pilots, all still wearing their school uniforms.  Misato did a quick introduction to Dr. Ritsuko Akagi, who was the scientific director of NERV, and began on the afternoon's agenda.

 

“Everyone,” she began, “You've already met Patrick and Vance.  Officially Patrick and Vance are considered only back-up pilots, but in effect they are the pilots of Evangelion Units 03 and 04.”

 

Dr. Akagi now joined in. “We will be conducting a joint training operation between the Japanese and American branches of NERV and among EVA units.  Because only NERV in Japan has fought Angels, it's important that NERV-2 get some experience. The best way to accomplish that is to train with our own pilots.”

“That's right!” Asuka exclaimed.  “We are the best!”

Misato chided her. “Now Asuka, there's no need to boast.  You guys work in a team effort!”

“Sure, that's what you're supposed to say,” Asuka retorted.  “But we all know Japanese kick serious ass!” Everyone else in the room just winced at her comment.

 

Fortunately Shinji was more serious. “How long have you piloted EVA?” he asked the two Americans.

Vance replied “I've been with Unit 03 for three years.  Patrick is newer to this.”

Patrick chimed in. “Yeah, I've only been piloting a few months.”

Dr Akagi continued. “Right now we have some tests to conduct, and then you can all talk later.”

“Correct!” finished Misato. “And both of you boys are invited to my place after we're though here!”

 

Following the meeting all five of the pilots went to their respective ready rooms.  As they prepared for the impending harmonics test, Patrick donned his plug suit, an orange-colored bodysuit with black stripes, and walked over to Shinji.

 

“Hey, let me introduce myself again. I'm Patrick,” he said, offering his hand.

“Ikari Shinji.  Nice to meet you.” They both shook hands. “You speak Japanese very well.”

“Thanks,” Patrick said, feeling relieved. “I was learning for a couple of years before I got into this.”

“And Vance, too?”

“I think he's a bit newer at it. Anyway, your fellow pilot doesn't say much,” Patrick said to Shinji.

 

Shinji had to think for a moment about who Patrick meant. “Oh, Ayanami?  No, she really doesn't.  That's just the way she is.”

“Anyway,” Patrick inquired “Will she be going to Capt. Katsuragi's place after we're done?”

“It's Major now, actually, and I don't really know. She sort of keeps to herself,” Shinji replied.

“I see...”

“Actually, we don't know all that much about her at all,” Shinji commented, as he finished putting on his own plug suit, “But she's still one of us.”

One of us… 

 

 

The harmonics test took about one hour, each pilot sat inside their entry plug as various test protocols were run.  Mostly the testing was done to determine how well each pilot was able to mentally synchronize (or “sync”) with their respective Evangelion unit.   From the outside, the test was silent and motionless, with only dynamic readings on computer monitors to indicate any activity.  The real action took place inside each pilot's minds, as electroneural probes invisibly passed through each pilot's brain, registering their conscious and unconscious response to various stimuli.  The process was usually not painful, but Patrick always felt it was strange at times, like some unseen force was pushing his thoughts around.  He had learned earlier that he could push back and usually after some effort he was able to match the intruding probes exactly move for move.  It was one of the weirder things about being an Evangelion pilot.

 

In the control room, Misato watched the five pilots on the monitors and turned to Dr. Akagi. “How is the test going?”

“EVA-03 and 04 are still being calibrated, so this is only preliminary, but our two new pilots seem to be performing adequately,” Ritsuko replied.

“How so?”

 

Ritsuko checked monitors as she spoke with Misato. “Vinson is moderate, lower than Asuka, but stable.  Forrestal seems better, more on a level with Shinji.”

“I see,” said Misato.  “I thought the Americans were only supposed to build those two EVA units, not operate them by themselves!”
“That was the original plan,” replied Ritsuko. “Evidently they found a way to employ their own pilots.”

“But the Marduk Institute was supposed to be the only organization able to find pilots. How are those two able to pilot the EVA?”

 

The scientist took her eyes away from the monitors. “I don't know myself. That information is held by NERV-2 and they haven't let me see it. I think that the Americans are holding them as an insurance policy.”

“Meaning?”

 

Ritsuko took off her glasses. “Meaning, if Tokyo-3 were to be destroyed, there would be something left to fight the Angels.”

Misato was indignant. “Meaning that they don't trust us!”

“It's reasonable from a certain point of view, really,” continued Ritsuko.  “In any case, if Marduk hasn't identified them, I do wonder how they've been able to determine how they're capable of piloting EVA.   Interestingly enough, I've met Forrestal's father.”

“Oh?”

“Dr. Harrison Forrestal.  He co-developed the MAGI along with my mother.”

Misato sat down in one of the chairs. “I thought your mother was the primary designer of the MAGI?”

“She was, but Dr. Forrestal worked on many of the sub-components of the system.  He's also the technical chief of NERV-2.  If these two boys are capable of piloting EVA, it's probably his doing.” Dr. Akagi carefully checked the monitors again and turned to her assistant, Lieutenant Maya Ibiki.

“Maya?”

The petit young officer eagerly swiveled in her chair. “Yes, sempai?”

“Finish the test. I think we have enough for now.”

 

Dr. Akagi and Major Katsuragi were not the only ones with a strong interest in the abilities of the American pilots. Several stories above them in the commander's office, NERV commander Gendo Ikari and Vice Commander Kozue Futsuyuki both reviewed the test data forwarded to them by Dr. Akagi.

 

“How well are the Americans adjusting?” asked Vice Commander Futsuyuki.

“They are conducting harmonics tests currently and will be settling in for a couple of days,” replied Commander Ikari.  “We should be able to start conducing joint training shortly.”

“Interesting that the Americans would choose now to reveal their little secret,” Futsuyuki commented. “We had no idea before now that they were doing this?”

The commander mulled a bit. “Conducting full-scale operations with two EVAs would ordinarily be quite difficult to hide. They wouldn't have been able to go this far without a great deal of help.”

“Do you think they don't trust us?” queried the Vice Commander.

Gendo looked at him. ”Who, the Committee?”

“Yes. No doubt they have their own fall-back plan in case of our failure.”

“Or a way to police us if we succeed too well.  While the revelation of their own side program is troubling, I'm more concerned that they've even found pilots,” mulled Ikari.  “That wasn't supposed to be possible without us being involved.”

“I understand that Dr. Forrestal is brilliant,” Futsuyuki said, “An expert both with quantum computers and with genetics. He had a Nobel Prize at a young age before Second Impact.”

“Nonetheless he seems to know more than he has a right to,” commented the commander. “Put their pilots to the maximum test possible. Let's see if they're capable of masquerading as well as they seem.”

 

 At the same time, half-way around the world.

 

The man stood before a window overlooking the desert. The sun was just now coming up again in the East.  Behind him, a young officer opened the door and stood at attention.

“Yes?”

The young officer spoke. “A message from MICHAEL, sir.  He says they've achieved penetration into Tokyo-3.”

“Good.”  He motioned to the officer, and he left the observation room.  As sunlight began to illuminate the desert in front of him, the man stared out into the horizon.

Now is the beginning of the end.